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North Carolina Republicans on Monday filed a bill to reduce the state’s early voting period from 17 days to 10.
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If passed this session, the bill, Senate Bill 1084, would apply to the upcoming midterm elections in November.
Legislative leaders have not yet given the bill a committee hearing, but Senate leader Phil Berger has recently expressed interest in cutting the early voting period for primary elections, which have much lower turnout.
Asked on Tuesday if he’d support SB 1084, which cuts the number of early voting days for primary and general elections, Berger told reporters “we’ll see what happens.”
“I hear a lot of complaints from both Republicans and Democrats about the number, particularly those that have to work the elections,” he said. “Hopefully we can get some consensus around that for the primaries. I think we need to reduce the number of days in the general as well, but obviously it’s likely to face even more opposition.”
SB 1084 is sponsored by Sen. Warren Daniel of Morganton, who chairs the Senate Elections Committee.
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House Speaker Destin Hall has also expressed support for reducing the early voting period for primary elections.
At a press conference hosted by Black lawmakers on Tuesday, Sen. Natalie Murdock, a Durham Democrat, said the bill was part of a larger pattern of Republicans enacting obstacles to voting.
“It is clear that if they don’t think folks are going to vote for them, they want to make it more difficult for them to vote,” she said.
In recent years, the legislature has instituted a voter ID requirement, eliminated the three-day grace period for receiving absentee ballots, cut the timeline for approving provisional ballots and transferred control of all state and local election boards to the Republican state auditor, Dave Boliek.
Last year, Republicans in the House filed two separate bills to cut early voting days, but neither got a hearing.
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This story was originally published May 19, 2026 at 11:43 AM.